Politics

Obamacare, Impeachment, Iran, and More Political Predictions for 2014

Whatever else the week between Christmas and New Year’s is, it’s a godsend for columnists who are short on serious ideas, because we get to do things like write predictions columns. Thank you, Pope Gregory. But I promise you a few surprises, and a couple made of concrete so that you can hold me to them and wave them in my face a few months hence.

So between now and January 15, congressional appropriators have to set those levels. One has to assume that the GOP establishment’s “no more stupid shutdowns” rule will still have force. But there will be enough Tea Party members willing to create enough mischief to make things suspenseful again. I somehow suspect that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), notably sidelined during the December negotiations, won’t be quite so cooperative this time around.

I’d still say there won’t be a shutdown. House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have that much control over their caucuses. But it’s just the rhythm of these things that the radicals have to flex a little muscle this time. I predict a really, really last-minute deal, in which the radicals won’t get anything but will have reminded the establishment that they’re not lying down.

The Republicans will announce some set of ridiculous debt-limit increase demands. Obama will say, “I’m not negotiating.” He has said that every since the first debt fiasco back in 2009, but behind the scenes, the administration has talked.

This time I think it’ll be different. I sense Obama has just reached the end of his rope on this one. That face of his, which so rarely betrays an emotion, contorts whenever the issue arises, into the shape of someone who’s just sucked a lemon. In addition, Congress’s role in the debt limit is at heart a question of constitutional law, and if this con-law president is going to take a stand over anything, it’s probably that. I don’t know exactly what Obama is going to do, but it could be dramatic—he even had his lawyers studying that platinum-coin nonsense last year. This is the issue on which he’ll invite an impeachment charge. I’d imagine he’d like to be the president who settled this one once and for all—assuming it’s settled in his direction, which I can’t predict, except to say I think efforts to impeach him over the issue would go nowhere and only help Obama.

Did you notice that nearly 1 million people signed up for health-care coverage in December? That was to meet the deadline to have coverage by January 1. The final deadline for signing up for the federal or state exchanges is March 31. How many people are going to sign their freedom away between now and the first pitch of the baseball season?

I predict that at this point, another 3 million is a conservative estimate. I’ll go ahead and give you a number—by March 31, I say we’ll have 5.8 million sign-ups. That’s not 7 million, but it’s not bad. There’s nothing magic about 7 million, mind you—it’s not like the Hellmouth starts devouring Sunnydale on April 1 if 7 million isn’t hit. It’s just a target that was intended to suggest the likelihood of a decent balance of sick and healthy. I doubt 5.8 million would be all that much different.

My broader prediction, echoing what I’ve written previously, is that Obamacare is not going to be anywhere near the problem for Democrats next fall that most pundits and most polls now are foreseeing.